The Parting Glass (Caitlin Ross Book 4) (27 page)

I pictured him walking along the highway with his thumb out. I pictured him in an out of the way truck stop, eating pie and flirting with a middle-aged waitress who called him “honey.” She wore her glasses on a chain around her neck.

In five days, I hadn’t heard from him. Surely he’d reached Portland by now. Why hadn’t he called? Sometimes guys forgot to call. They didn’t have the same sensitivity to emotional niceties that women did. Things distracted them, and Timber did have Mitch to face. I wondered how that would go.

Sometimes guys never intended to call. But Timber had promised. He’d promised always to come back. He’d found his way home from the edge of death after Stonefeather’s ceremony. Portland was nowhere near so far.

Maybe he’d forgotten me. I remembered our last night together and didn’t believe it.

Not at first.

After he’d been gone ten days, I decided he’d been too busy to call. He hadn’t given himself enough time to tie up the loose ends of his Portland life and get back. Doubtless it had taken longer than he’d expected. I’d give him two weeks. Two and a half, tops. If it were going to take longer, he’d call.

He didn’t call. I half expected him just to show up at the door someday. He didn’t do that, either.

I thought about us. I contemplated the phenomenon of loving. Of being in love. I meditated on the difference between the two. Falling in love could be easy. As easy as tripping and falling off anything, or sliding on winter ice. If you were unsure of your feet, or your balance, all it took was one false step. One push to either side. But wasn’t that merely infatuation? A matter of pheromones and opportunity. Some kind of chemical reaction, like using baking soda and salt to make quick bread rise: fast working, soon burned out. Real love took more. You had to feed it, like dissolving yeast in sweetened water.

What had Timber and I fed our relationship? Chemistry we had in abundance, and sexual compatibility. Our gifts meshed. We worked well together. But take away those things, and what was left? I knew nothing about him. I didn’t know his favorite food, or what movies he enjoyed, or whether he liked to watch televised sports on weekends. He didn’t know my favorite color, or where I liked to shop, or if I went to concerts.

We didn’t know each other at all.

When July rolled into its third week and I still hadn’t heard from him, I knew the whole thing had been a mistake. A glitch. A moment’s impulse toward physical gratification. No doubt he’d seen it sooner, maybe as soon as he got clear of my influence. It had just taken me longer to realize the truth. Sexual satisfaction always clouded my emotions the same way, made me think I felt things, made me perceive attachments where none existed. That’s why I didn’t indulge often. I should have known better.

I took off the obsidian earring and stashed it in a drawer. Digging out a compilation CD of Great Romantic Hits, I popped it in the store sound system, and sat behind the counter, brooding.

As luck—bad luck—would have it, Sage came in halfway through Gordon Lightfoot singing “If You Could Read my Mind.” Typical timing for her. I hoped she wouldn’t notice my choice of music, and for a while, it seemed she wouldn’t. We talked about this and that. Then, in the middle of giving me her recipe for jerked goat, Sage paused and wrinkled her nose, as if she smelled something bad.

“Caitlin, what you listening to?”

Roberta Flack started crooning about a man killing her softly with his song.

“Ummm…” I said.

Her eyes narrowed, letting me know in no uncertain terms how much trouble I was in.

“That’s sappy music. Sappy break-up music. What happened? Did that man dump you? Did that man dump you
over the phone
?”

Timber’s singing the second verse of
The Parting Glass
to me at Stonefeather’s memorial had appeased my friend to a degree. Now, her incipient fondness for the Big Man, as she called him, split and shed like a thin skin, revealing the stone antagonism beneath.

“No,” I mumbled. “I… Uh. I haven’t heard from him.”

I had no time to brace myself for the explosion.

“What? How long he been gone? Three weeks?”

“Almost,” I admitted with no small reluctance.

“Three weeks and he hasn’t even called you?” She whirled on the speaker from which Roberta Flack still wailed. “Turn that shit off! Right this instant! You hear me?”

I flipped the switch under the counter, and the music died, all at once. Not a little at a time, like my heart.

“You don’t listen to no love songs for a man who done you wrong,” Sage instructed me. “Songs like those are for remembering a good man. Not a piece of trash like that MacDuff bastard.”

“We were good together,” I said.

“Boo-fucking-hoo,” Sage retorted. “You pull yourself together, Caitlin Ross, you hear me? Pull up your big girl panties and move on.”

In the privacy of my own mind, I believed I deserved time to grieve. For what had been, and for what might have been. But, as I’ve said before, Sage didn’t do sympathy.

“Me, I’ve got some hunting to do,” she went on, and I saw Erzulie surface. Not the sensual aspect. The Warrior. Erzulie Yeux Rouge, Whose heart is always shattered. Who is always disappointed in love, and leaves in tears, only to recoup and take revenge.

“Sage! No!” I cried.

“Don’t you stand up for him! Don’t you dare!” she shouted back. “He gave me his sacred oath this wouldn’t happen again, and he knew what would happen if he broke it.”

I thought fast. “He said he’d accept retribution if he hurt me as badly as before. This isn’t as bad.” Only because I’d been working myself up to some kind of acceptance over the last two and a half weeks. But Sage didn’t need to know that.

She glared at me. I held her eyes without flinching or turning my gaze aside, willing her to believe me.

“Fine!” she spat at last. “I’ll let you get on with your pathetic life! And don’t go asking me for any more favors!”

She left, slamming the door behind her.

Three days later, I realized my period was late.

Two weeks late.

Oh, fuck. This could not be happening.

Okay, chill
, I told myself. My cycles had always been a little screwy, a result of the magic in me, I assumed. Not something a person could consult a gynecologist about. And I’d been using a whole heap of magic in the last month. Even without magic, lots of things could disrupt a woman’s cycle. Stress; I’d had plenty of that. Travel; of a sort. Weight loss; how often had Timber chided me for not eating enough? And my clothes did feel looser. Even a change in routine could do it. The goddess knew, the events of June had changed my routine.

I decided to give it another week.

Another week passed. Still no word from Timber. Still no cycle. I’d been under a huge amount of strain, though. And Sage wasn’t speaking to me. A good thing, too; she’d know at once I had something up.

This is stupid
. I took a firm grip on my racing thoughts.
Just go down to Lolita’s and buy a pregnancy test. Then you’ll know.

Except, I couldn’t. I couldn’t face the possibility without having some idea what I’d do if… If. I needed to get away, go someplace by myself to get in touch with my goddess and clear my head. I hadn’t taken a retreat in far too long.

I picked up the phone.

“Zee?” I said when his chipper voice answered. “Caitlin. I need a favor.”

At sunset on Saturday night, the last day of July, Zee let me off at the trail on Flagstaff Summit Road leading to Sunrise Amphitheatre.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked as I retrieved a roll of blankets, an extra sweater and a water bottle from the back seat. His amiable face creased with concern.

“Yes.” I slammed the door and leaned in the window. “Pick me up in twenty-four hours.”

“I don’t know, Caitlin,” Zee said, wavering. “Timber would…”

“Timber’s not here,” I countered, more sharply than I intended. I tried to make my tone softer. “And if he were, he’d agree that I had to do this.” Probably.

“Okay,” Zee unwillingly agreed. “Take care, then.”

He pulled away down the road, and I headed for the amphitheatre.

It hadn’t been my first choice of location. In my heart, it still bore the marks of the ceremony a little over a month before. But I’d been late in deciding my course, and I didn’t have many options. Zee had only agreed to drive me if I promised to stay somewhere for the most part accessible. He didn’t want me getting hurt or getting lost, the way so many hikers did every year. So anything approaching true wilderness was out. And I simply didn’t feel up to making a great effort. The amphitheatre would have to do.

Skirting the charred flagstones where the previous month’s fire had burned, where John Stonefeather had met his end, I made my way to the altar and dropped my things. I spread out my blankets and leaned my water bottle against the stone. The night was already cooling down, so I put on my extra sweater.

I made a couple trips into the surrounding woods, collecting rocks and fallen branches, which I used to construct a small fire ring on the altar. Taking a lighter from my pocket, I held it to the kindling, watching it spark. Watching the flame spread.

Kneeling on my blankets, I prayed.

“Cerridwen, goddess, I really need you right now.”

She was the goddess of transition, the goddess of change. I didn’t do well with transition and change; that’s why I had dedicated myself to Her. Plop me down in a situation, and I came out all right, most of the time. But getting from one place to another, especially in my heart… That was hard.

She didn’t answer. She didn’t appear. Often, She didn’t. That in itself was a kind of answer. I needed to do this by myself. I needed to come to terms with things on my own.

My shoulders shook. I screwed up my face and tightened my throat to keep back the threatening flood of my tears, but it didn’t work.

It wasn’t fair. I wanted a mother, any mother. Someone to listen to my problems, and pat me on the back, and give me sensible advice. Shit, I’d even take my own mother. Not that she’d do any of those things. But her simple presence would count.

I cried for a long time. And I’d forgotten to bring tissues. Stupid.

At long last, I recovered some sense of self-possession. Wiping my face and nose on my sleeve, I settled into a cross-legged position. The fire had burned low, and I added a couple branches from my stock of dead wood. A new prayer occurred to me, an old Greek one. It seemed fitting.

“Gods, please avert from me the evil I beg for and grant me the good I do not know enough to desire.”

I stared into the fire as the night passed, seeking an unwritten message in the coals. When I needed to, I added more wood. A couple of times, I got up to collect more branches. Nothing stirred in the woods around me. I wished something would.

I thought about being pregnant. I thought about not being pregnant.

There were herbs. Tansy, feverfew and pennyroyal worked. I knew some women who drank them in tea every day to keep their cycles regular, so to speak. I didn’t keep a large stock of herbs in the shop, but they weren’t hard to come by. The tea might bring on my period.

If it did, though, I’d never know. And if it didn’t, I’d be right back in the same place. Facing the same choice.

I remembered Sage’s words after Lithe:
Do you want a little reminder running around in nine months? Do you want to be a single mother?

Well, no to the second. I’d seen how that turned out for my eldest sister. On the other hand, I had advantages she hadn’t. A good job and a circle of friends. A decent place to live.

Could I even be a good mother? I didn’t have a great example to follow. But I had to admit that very thing gave me a good idea of what
not
to do.

So I had to face the first question: did I want a reminder? A baby might not be so bad; babies didn’t often resemble much of anybody. Later, though… I envisioned a toddler with Timber’s dark, curling hair, with his deep blue eyes. Could I live with that person? Could I see her every day and not become hateful and bitter? I didn’t know. Was it worth the risk? I didn’t want to damage an innocent child the way I had been damaged.